Kinetic and Potential Energy

I read last week an electronics magazine article about developments in electric aircraft. Yes – for real – the aviation industry is not confined to using truck loads of fossil fuel to get from A to B. The article got off to a bad start by using the word ‘electric’ with the phrase ‘reduced greenhouse […]

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Another weight-based challenge

About eighteen months ago I thought about the challenge invited by an airline’s policy on cabin baggage – forget the weight, if it’s smaller than a certain size you can take it on board.  A similar challenge has been set by the company that collects my garden rubbish. I have a ‘green’ wheelie bin, which […]

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Unhelpful instructions

I’ve been spending some time over the last few days clearing out six years of accumulated junk from our garage. One of the latest discoveries was an empty paint tin, left over from when we attacked the bathroom about three years ago. I like to think that I am moderately conscious of what I do […]

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Measurement beats guesswork

OK – so this story is a touch light on the physics front, but it does demonstrate the power of actually taking the time to measure something, instead of assuming the obvious. My wife has kindly agreed to help a friend (who has limited mobility) travel from Cambridge to Hamilton for a medical appointment. This […]

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Teach science understanding, not recipes

If you teach science at university (or, I suggest, at school too) and have an hour free (ha ha) this recent lecture by Eric Mazur is well worth a listen.  I’m willing to bet that it will be an hour well invested. http://www.youtube.com/user/uwaterloo#p/u/41/tn1DLFnbGOo Here’s three points I thought were particularly significant (to the point that […]

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Wood and water

It all started so well…A nice sunny Saturday, a good opportunity to get going on some of those jobs that you’ve put off for too long.  So I put a final coat of paint on the door and, with that task out of the way, I decided to move to tackling the pergola that sits over […]

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DNA sequencing in one easy step?

DNA Sequencing has been around for a while now. It’s success is down to a wonderfully unlikely collaboration between molecular biology and computer science. Basically, in simple terms (apologies to molecular biologists if I get this wrong – feel free to correct me) to sequence your genome, you take your DNA, chop it into bits, replicate […]

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